The Bride Who Ended Up in My Chair

“Let’s get in before we both freeze,” I said.

The kitchen was warm and smelled like coffee and wet hair. Seven young women in matching blush pink robes sat around a long farm table that had clearly been in that family a hundred years.

Every one of them looked up at me at once.

Kendra was standing by the stove in a white robe with her arms wrapped around herself. Her face was blotched, and her wet hair was combed straight back from her forehead.

She did not look at me. She looked at the linoleum about a foot in front of my boots. “Thank you for coming,” she said to the floor.

“Of course,” I said. Then I clapped my hands once, the way Grandma used to when she wanted us kids moving. “All right. Let’s get you girls pretty.”

I would like to say I had a speech ready, something gracious and wise. I did not. I had a job to do and about two hours to do it in, and that was the only thing in my head.

I plugged the power strip in by the toaster and set the curling irons in a row on a folded towel. I propped Linda’s bathroom mirror against a stack of cereal boxes and a sack of flour at the end of the table.

Then I did the math out loud, because math calms me down. “It’s nine forty-five. We have eight of you. Pictures at one. I want everybody done by noon so you can eat something and get dressed.”

“That’s two hours and fifteen minutes,” said a red-haired bridesmaid near the end of the table. “For eight people.”

“That’s right,” I said. “So bridesmaids get curls and a low twisted bun, the same on everybody, so it looks planned. Twelve minutes a head. The bride gets the rest of the time.”

“What about makeup?” someone asked.

“Who can do her own eyeliner?” Five hands went up. “Good. You five do your own, then help the other two. I’ll do the bride myself, last.”

Kendra still had not said a word. She had sat down at the far end of the table, as far from the mirror as she could get, holding a coffee cup she was not drinking from.

The first bridesmaid was Amy, Kendra’s younger sister, twenty-four, who taught second grade over in Ogallala. She sat down in front of the mirror and grinned up at me.

“I’ve always wanted to come to your shop,” she said. “Kendra wouldn’t let me.”

“Well,” I said, “you’re in it now.”

I worked fast. Section, spray, curl with the one-and-a-quarter inch iron, pin each curl to cool while I curled the next.

Then I took the pins out, brushed the curls loose, twisted them low at the nape, and crossed the pins in pairs so the twist would hold through a reception.

When I handed Amy a hand mirror to see the back, she said “oh” in a way that made two of the other girls stand up to look. That helped. It always helps when the first one comes out right.

The second girl was the redhead, Megan, a friend of Kendra’s from college in Kearney. The third and fourth had short bobs that would not hold a bun, so they got soft waves and a sparkle pin. Eight minutes each.